Thursday, November 08, 2007
Sicko
Finally got to see Michael Moore's "Sicko" last night. At best it was so-so. I get a kick out of how people LOVE or HATE Moore. Like anyone with an opinion, he has good points and bad. My only knock is he tries to make issues (i.e. health care) black and white when, in fact, there are shades of gray. Here's a feedback posting I liked/agreed with from IMDB.com:
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Having read all the comments and reviews, this movie was pretty much what I expected. Moore does a really good job in making his point.
What bothered me a little was his black & white view of the healthcare industry - either it is public OR private. In reality, many western countries have a "hybrid" system. For example here in Finland we have a pretty reasonable public healthcare system (which by the way is not totally free for the patient, albeit very cheap), but in addition, we also have private clinics, if you want even faster service and are willing to pay extra. You can also get an insurance from private companies, which provides extra financial support and/or service in the private clinics in case of illness. Also some workplaces and institutes have free doctors.
A portion of the cost of medicines is substituted by the government in either case, and there is an annual limit after which they are totally substituted.
I think it would be pretty straightforward to establish this kind of system in the US. There is no need to socialize healthcare TOTALLY. There is no need for the insurance company to "go" (as Moore put it), they just need to step aside a little and stop being the main authority. Also, if insurance companies have to compete with FREE (health care), there is only one thing they can do: offer really good service!
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Long story short- I'm glad I didn't pay full price when this film was in the theatres as it wasn't that great.
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